December, 2009
22
Dec 09
“Is it just me, or is Urban Yukon slow in picking up new posts?”
It’s not just you. I’ve noticed the same for a while, and recently Urban Yukon has become positively sluggish in listing new posts, sometimes taking many hours before updating.
I don’t have any hard numbers, but if there is a slowdown, it’s likely due to the Feed Informer service that provides the list of postings on UY’s home page. Feed Informer has been mostly reliable, but occasionally hiccups and displays nothing at all on the UY page. (When that happens, try refreshing your browser.) Of course, for the price of exactly zero clams, I have no real complaints with the service.
But Feed Informer’s days are numbered anyway, as I have to replace it with custom code to enable the promised new features. My goal is to make the transition as seamless as possible, with no interruptions to the flow of postings. Once the new platform is in place, I expect to have a method to pick up new posts the instant that they are published.
13
Dec 09
Blogging Etiquette: Add a final slash to your URLs
URLs can be quirky. Creating a link in a post is easy enough, but filling in the website field when leaving comments on other blogs can be confounding. For instance, I’m never sure if I need to enter the http:// part — the Web’s inventor has apologized for the excessive punctuation — but I do always include the final trailing slash after the domain name: http://urbanyukon.com/
And, to be polite to your link-clicking guests, you should type that final slash too. The reason is that the web server treats http://urbanyukon.com and http://urbanyukon.com/ differently. The slash-less form is actually incorrect, and so the web server is forced to respond with a message to the browser to re-request the same URL, but with the added slash at the end. That’s two extra messages flying to and fro just for the sake of one measly slash.
If the URL continues past the domain name (e.g., http://urbanyukon.com/blog/2009/12/13/blogging-etiquette-add-a-final-slash-to-your-urls/), then there may or may not be a slash at the very end — don’t add one in this case if you’re not sure.
6
Dec 09
New Urban Yukon Blog: Grantham Family Happenings
Ple ase welc ome the Gra nth am Fam ily Hap pen in gs blog to the Ur ba n Yuk on com mu ni ty.
TJ, Heather, Dustin, Emily, Lydia, and June, not exactly as shown.
6
Dec 09
Urban Yukon update, December 2009
Urban Yukon postings have been on a tear lately. I don’t have exact numbers, but we seem to be averaging at least twenty new posts per day. Our dark season likely has something to do with the prolific outpourings.
We also have a few new members. I’ll be welcoming them here shortly. Please visit and comment; both new and established bloggers appreciate — and secretly crave — feedback.
At least a couple of UY blogs have been nominated for the Canadian Blog Awards. Please vote for your favourite personal or family blogs (hint: “possessive” blogs that start with F or M). Results will be posted on December 12th.
It’s taken me a while to figure out how best to add the most requested features from the recent UY poll. In short, there will be some programming involved, but that’s fine by me. The features that I’ll tackle first will be:
- Gather together multiple recent posts by a single author so that they don’t crowd out other postings.
- Ability to view older blog postings than just those shown on the front page.
- Search that can find matches in posting contents.
- Categories for member blogs (e.g., business, techie, family, news).
- “Identicons” alongside postings to highlight the author
The first three have become ever more important, what with the growth in posting frequency of late.
I’ll be introducing the changes gradually, at a different URL so that interested folks can try them out before the changes are promoted to the “live” site. I also think that most of us appreciate the basic way that Geof organized UY, and I don’t want to mess with that successful formula.
As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.
